Campaign for the American Reader: What is Phillip DePoy reading?

Monday, February 15, 2016

What is Phillip DePoy reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Phillip DePoy, author of A Prisoner in Malta.

His entry begins:

I can’t read fiction when I’m working on one of my own books—it’s too confusing or, more often, intimidating. When I made the mistake of reading the first page of The Poisonwood Bible, it took me six weeks to recover. Six weeks of considering other careers--plumbing or fish-mongering. So I’m happily reading two non-fiction books at the same time right now. Brian Walker’s Hua Hu Ching: The Unknown Teachings of Lao Tzu, and Alain de Botton’s How Proust Can Change Your Life—the subtitle of which is “Not a Novel.”

The Hua Hu Ching is a sort of companion book to the Tao Te Ching, arguably the oldest philosophical book in the world. A very valuable idea I get from that book is...[read on]

About A Prisoner in Malta, from the publisher:

In 1583, the nineteen-year-old Christopher Marlowe---with a reputation as a brawler, a womanizer, a genius, and a social upstart at Cambridge University---is visited by a man representing Marlowe's benefactors. There are rumors of a growing plot against her majesty Queen Elizabeth I, and the Queen's spymaster, Sir Francis Walsingham, has charged young Marlowe with tracking down the truth. The path to that truth seems to run through an enigmatic prisoner held in complete seclusion in a heavily guarded dungeon in Malta. Marlowe must use every bit of his wits, his skills, and his daring to unravel one of the greatest mysteries in history and help uncover and unravel scheme of assassination and invasion, one involving the government of Spain, high ranking English nobles, and even Pope himself.

Christopher Marlowe---Elizabethan playwright, poet, and spy---is one of the most enigmatic figures in Renaissance England. The son of a shoemaker from Canterbury, he attended Cambridge University on scholarship and, while frequently in trouble, was bailed out through the intercession of Queen Elizabeth I's Privy Council. Long rumored to have been an agent on behalf of the Queen's spymaster, Edgar Award winner Phillip DePoy's new series brings Marlowe and his times to life.